Daily Deals Debate – Groupon vs. LivingSocial

We are all familiar with them, those nifty deal sites that spam our inbox-es every morning and tempt us with activities and cuisine we may have never tried on our own. I, for one, am guilty. I sign up for the daily emails with the hope of landing a great price on something that interests me. And while the deal I’m looking for rarely comes my way, I have found the deals they do provide are many times worthwhile. However every time I get the emails or ponder a purchase, I wonder what site is actually better? Who do people like the most? And lastly who should I be buying from?

So to figure this out, I have taken to social media. I’ve reviewed the number of fans and followers and browsed the wall of happy supporters and regretful purchasers. But because of the magnitude of the brands it is difficult to decipher who is the most popular and ultimately who is best. I decided to narrow my focus and chose two brands that seem to be the most popular: Groupon and LivingSocial.

From the outside, Groupon and LivingSocial seem pretty similar – they have daily deal emails, focus on large metropolitan areas, and offer discounts on anything from dinner to salsa dancing.

To get a deeper understanding of the brands, I turned to reviewing the statistics found in Viralheat. After plugging in my two brands, I got to work reviewing my data. With a quick glance at the Profile Comparison tool within Viralheat, I can clearly see that Groupon has far more mentions across Twitter, Facebook, video, and the real time web. Because mentions are the conversations going on about these brands, this gives me the indication that this brand is likely more popular. But how do the mentions measure up in the sentiment department?

For this information, I pulled up the Viralheat Profile Sentiment Trends tool. This tool allows you to see the positive, negative and neutral sentiment associated with your mentions. Interestingly enough, I found that Groupon and LivingSocial have very similar sentiment across the web. Both have overwhelmingly positive sentiment – hovering around 70% of all mentions. To me, a high sentiment indicates people are happy with the companies and the deals they have found through the sites. So to sum up the Daily Deals Debate, Groupon may be more popular with more people mentioning this brand across the web but the two brands both win in the sentiment department with high positive sentiment for all mentions.